Eclectro voting widget
The Eclectro voting widget is a widget made for the best record of the year election. The widget uses a very simple mechanism. When loading the widget it shuffles the database and gives you 50 random pairs with songs. You're asked to pick the one you like the most. A simple 1 out 2 choice. When you made your choice you get a new pair.
Every visitor of the website gets a different array of songs to listen to. A algorithm checks if every record is served equally.
This method makes it easy and very intuitive to vote and discover new music. Over the past years the mechanism has proven to be a big success and makes it very difficult to hijack the election by lobby groups. You can start a lobby, but the effect will be small because you are also asked to vote other records you see before reaching the one you want to vote up.
Video of the 2009 widget
2009 in numbers
90.951 votes
66 distributed widgets
72 retweets
81 facebook shares
146.789 pageviews
2008 in numbers
The page: http://www.eclectro.nl/bestof2008/results.php
About the widget: http://www.hypernarrative.com/wordpress/2008/12/18/the-2008-eclectro-vote-gadget/
68.049 votes
199 distributed widgets
171.805 pageviews
50.317 unique views
2007 in numbers
50.000 votes
154.056 pageviews
Other websites using this: Look I Like
Freshheads implemented a version of this widget for the Look-I-Like website where you can vote on your favorite model. The best one wins a photo shoot. And it probably wouldn't surprise you that they have had millions of votes already.